Hans Bethe -- worked on A-bomb, feared space weaponry

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, March 8, 2005

Photo: MICHAEL OKONIEWSKI

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**FILE** Cornell University Professor Hans A. Bethe is pictured in his campus office in Ithaca, N.Y., Dec. 19, 1996. Written on the blackboard is Bethe's famous "Carbon Cycle" equation for nuclear energy generation in stars. Bethe, who played a pivotal role in designing the first atomic bomb and won a belated Nobel Prize in physics in 1967 for figuring out how the sun and stars generate energy, died at his home Sunday, Cornell University said Monday, March 7, 2005. He was 98. (AP Photo/Michael Okoniewski) FILE PHOTO FROM DEC. 19, 1996 less

**FILE** Cornell University Professor Hans A. Bethe is pictured in his campus office in Ithaca, N.Y., Dec. 19, 1996. Written on the blackboard is Bethe's famous "Carbon Cycle" equation for nuclear energy ... more

Photo: MICHAEL OKONIEWSKI

Hans Bethe -- worked on A-bomb, feared space weaponry

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Hans Bethe, the last of the giants of 20th century physics who explained the energy source that powers the stars and helped develop the atom bomb, but devoted decades of his life to nuclear arms control and campaigns against space-based weaponry, died Sunday night at his home in Ithaca, N.Y.

He was 98, a Nobel laureate and one of the most admired figures in modern science.

In the last years of his life, he continued working on the deepest problems of theoretical astrophysics while advising the government and weapons- makers on how to control the proliferation of nuclear arms.

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Nearly 70 years ago, Professor Bethe published a seminal paper announcing that the fusion of hydrogen and helium atoms in stars like the sun was the source of their energy and light. The discovery won him the Nobel Prize nearly 30 years later, and while it also helped inspire Edward Teller to conceive of the hydrogen bomb, it also led to the long and bitter enmity between the two scientists who were once close friends.

Born in Strasbourg in 1906 when that city was part of Germany and not yet France, Hans Albrecht Bethe had a mother who was Jewish although his father, a professor of physiology, was not. After earning his doctorate in physics at the University of Munich and starting his research career, he was forced by Hitler's race laws to flee Germany in 1933 -- first to England and then to the United States and Cornell University.

Professor Bethe (pronounced BAY-tah) spent virtually his entire career as a faculty member at Cornell, but he was a frequent visitor to physics departments at both UC Berkeley and Stanford.

To Sidney Drell, a close friend of Professor Bethe and the former deputy director at the accelerator center, the Cornell physicist "was one of the truly great giants of modern physics -- the last of the legends in science, who also played a unique role in restraining the development of nuclear weapons and opposing the fallacies of ballistic missile defense."

Drell recalled Monday that he and Professor Bethe regularly briefed scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on issues relating to advanced nuclear weapons and space-based antimissile systems. He said Professor Bethe often opposed Teller's ideas during those briefings.

He was particularly active during the Reagan administration when "Star Wars" was high on the agenda. Professor Bethe maintained that concepts such as Teller's vision of ballistic missile defense based on such Teller concepts as "nuclear pumped X-ray lasers" in space were highly dangerous.

At the onset of World War II, however, it was Professor Bethe -- aware that the Nazis were trying to make an atom bomb -- who had joined Teller and others in urging American development of the weapon.

Recruited to Los Alamos, N.M., Professor Bethe persuaded J. Robert Oppenheimer that if such a bomb were to become reality, a major new understanding of theoretical physics would be required to make it feasible -- and at once he became head of the weapons laboratory's theoretical physics department to prove it so.

Even then, however, he strongly opposed Teller's insistence on working toward a hydrogen bomb, and the two scientists who had been physics colleagues and friends remained bitter opponents from then on.

In a 1950 article in Scientific American, Professor Bethe argued that if it were ever used, Teller's H-bomb could incinerate whole cities. "We must save humanity from this ultimate disaster," he wrote. "And we must break the habit, which seems to have taken hold of this nation, of considering every weapon just another piece of machinery and a fair means to win our struggle with the USSR."

Four years later, when Oppenheimer was under fire and was about to lose his security clearance, Professor Bethe supported him strongly and tried in vain to persuade Teller to do the same. The "father" of the H-bomb refused and testified against the man who had led them both at Los Alamos; the incident deepened Professor Bethe's opposition to his increasingly conservative onetime colleague.

Despite passionate support of nuclear arms control and his willingness to spend endless time testifying in Congress and urging his views on presidents, Professor Bethe also remained convinced that nuclear power was essential to supply the world with energy as fossil fuel supplies diminished, and to preserve the Earth's threatened environment.

But it was basic science -- and physics above all -- that sustained Professor Bethe's joy in life, his love of teaching, and his widely noted sunny temperament and sense of humor.

"The intellectual achievements of pure research are one of the things that make life worth living," he once wrote.

Jeffrey S. Lehman, president of Cornell, said in tribute to Professor Bethe: "In the breadth of his insight, the rigor of his research, the depth of his social conscience, Hans Bethe set the standard for engaged scientific citizenship that will serve as a beacon for generations to come."

Professor Bethe is survived by his wife, Rose; two children, Henry of Ithaca and Monica of Kyoto, Japan; and three grandchildren.

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